A Thankfully Heroine-Less Harrowing Adventure

Catbah was like three days in a spa. Which is good. Because things are about to get hard for us. Very uncomfortable and hard...
However, before it got bad, it stayed good for a couple hours...
The bus from Catbah Island to Hanoi picked us up from our hotel room around 6am. I sat next to a man whose thumb nail belongs in the Guinness book of world records (the men here and their grown out nails... ugh). I saw a cute puppy.

We got on a speedboat...

then seamlessly onto another bus that had Vietnamese karaoke (click here).

The last twenty minutes of the bus ride where I came the closest I've ever in my life been to having an- uh oh, you're in/urine trouble- accident was a gentle foreshadowing of things to come...

We arrived at the bus station and I stumbled off the bus in tears as the taxi drivers swarmed towards my big pink face. I pushed them away with my hands screaming toilet toilet toilet toilet toilet toilet!!!!
They led the way and were waiting for me with Kady when I exited the facilities.
We had a powwow and decided taking a taxi to the heavily travel-agency-populated area of town was our only option. We boarded a taxi and asked him to blast the AC. It was a scorcher.
We were in the taxi perhaps three minutes when we began to suspect something fishy was going on. Another minute confirmed it and we yelled for the driver to pull over.
We threw money at him and exited. We had just lived through our first "fixed-meter" taxi experience. The numbers clicked by in nearly $1 per kilometer increments, more than three times the legitimate fare. We were still some 7 km from our destination. Angry, hot and dejected, we decided we were in desperate need of some food.
We were on a street surrounded by cafes so this should be easy. Delicious, even. We stopped into the first cafe. No food, only coffee. We stopped into the second- no food, only coffee... and so on and so on until we had checked six or seven cafes. What kind of sick joke is this!? one of us screamed. The dizzy shakes were coming on so we decided to just stop, have some water, hopefully find Internet, and have one of the famous Vietnamese coffees. After all, they contain sweetened condensed milk so that's at least some nourishment right?
We were finally assisted onto a bus that took us to the part of Hanoi where we had spent an hour waiting for our van to Halong Bay/Catbah Island with Liz the Austrailian some three or four days earlier. We busted into the first travel agency we saw to find tickets to Laos. I couldn't believe we were about to get on another bus when we were already in such a miserable state. I asked about flights but they were too expensive. Kady reasoned with me and we gave ourselves permission to, in the future, take a future flight from Laos to Cambodia where we would be flying to Korea. This seemed logical and more than reasonable.
So we paid $18 for a ticket on an air-conditioned coach tour bus with comfortable reclining seats. At least they better be comfortable as this was going to be a twenty hour bus ride.

We spent the afternoon walking around the sweltering Hanoi:

We visited the P.O.W. Museum that has been nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton". The museum is housed in what was once the actual prison. Once again, I left a war museum learning nothing about this war, but the photos of all of the American prisoners posed doing their favorite activities such as making handmade Christmas cards, having guitar sing-alongs and playing badminton while they were incarcerated at this WAR CRIMES PRISON IN VIETNAM! were thoroughly appreciated.

We bummed a shower at the travel agency and dressed in the clothes that we would become ONE with over the next 20 hours on a bus. Two motorbikes arrived to take Kady and me along with all of our luggage to the bus waiting point.

Somehow Kady's driver got far ahead of mine. Now, these motorbike taxi rides are nothing short of terrifying to begin with (click for video), but to make matters worse, this particular "Hurry up and Wait"-ing point for this particular bus just happened to be in a preposterously suspicious isolated location. Her driver attempted to leave her there in the middle of this dusty no man's land construction site all by herself but she wouldn't have it. Needless to say, she was fairly agitated by the time I arrived nearly twenty minutes later. Her driver tried to extort me for my motorbike fare. I refused as this was not part of our agreement with our travel agency. He threw his hands up in frustration after I said, "No, nope, no money. No charge. No," then walked a few feet away to make a call. When conversing on a mobile phone, every single Vietnamese person sounds like they're threatening their listener's life. I observed his particularly heated conversation then smugly gloated as he hung up the phone, walked over to my driver and paid him from his own wallet.

I should have savored this feeling of vindication as it would not last long, nor be felt again for some time.

Kady and I waited for about ten minutes when a taxi van pulled up. I approached the large group of miscellaneous Europeans that filtered out and confirmed that we were all headed to Laos. I walked back to Kady to relay this good news and we gathered our belongings to go join the group. However, Kady's driver yelled at us to return to the spot she and I had been waiting at. Hesitantly and begrudgingly, we obeyed. Ten minutes later, a sole Swedish girl named Helga was sent over to join Kady and me.
We tried to brainstorm reasons why we three would be separated from the others. We commiserated over the discovery of the higher price-tags of our tickets but hope hope hoped this meant we were being put on the nicer bus...

The first bus arrived as it began to get dark. The group that had grown to some fifteen waiting Europeans shuffled aboard and Kady, Helga and I grew more and more discontent as we watched what we were convinced was the nicest bus we'd seen on our journey drive off and leave us waiting in the dark. Ten minutes later our bus arrived. It hardly came to a stop as we were forced to run after it on the side of the highway and board with all of our luggage.

Passing some eight or nine Vietnamese men, we clumsily made our way to the back of what we were convinced was the shabbiest bus of our entire journey. There were no tourists. This was no air-conditioned plush-seating coach bus. This was a local bus. With a 100% local non-English speaking crew and a hodgepodge of locals also on their way to Laos. The bus seemed to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to pick up and drop off locals en route.

At this point, I had a pretty bad attitude that would take me the next 96 hours to shake. I looked awful with this huge swollen gash on my face, I had waited too long to eat, there was nowhere to get water, and I was thirsty after walking around dripping in 110 degree weather all day (this dehydration would pay me a favor in a couple hours however). I therefore stubbornly refused to share a seat with Kady as I was directed to do by the "over"-staff made up of- in addition to the driver- the tall lanky one, the eric-elvendahl one, and the nondescript one I can't even remember. (He was so nondescript I'm actually beginning to wonder if he even existed.)

"No, I tell you what- I'll sit wherever I want," I said with disdain. This disdain in both Kady's and my voice would grow more and more spiteful over the next twenty hours, emboldened by the staff's lack of English-comprehension and, might I add, not at all unjustified.

After a solid hour, perhaps two, the bus was about two-thirds full having stopped (or, rather, slowed down) every ten minutes or so (for the nimble locals to hop aboard). So we were intrigued when we made an unusually long stop on the side of the road. Enormous green bundles were brought aboard. Kady was first kicked off the bench in the back row we had every intention of taking turns using as our bed over the next twenty hours. We three foreigners watched in awe as they continued to bring bundle after bundle onto the bus until the aisles were completely filled and we were trapped in our seats by an enormous green barrier.

Then, the tall lanky one pulled out a huge machete no more than six inches from Kady's face. He sliced it through the green bag, its guts spilling forth to reveal hundreds and hundreds of individually cellophane-wrapped Lacoste shirts.

We laughed and began snapping photos of this absurdity.

Our amusement was quickly converted to a different emotion when our cameras were confiscated by the crew who aggressively threatened to turn the lens on us. By "us", I mean "down my shirt". Their faces were menacing but then broke into large smiles as we snatched our cameras back. They're just kids, I told myself. They're just kids. They have no idea how this could be potentially terrifying to three foreign girls who have been separated from a large group of fellow-travellers. I repeated this as the eric-elvendahl one tickled my toes while I tried to sleep, as the tall lanky one fondled Kady's hung-to-dry swimsuit with a pervy smirk on his face, and as this random dude had something underneath the blanket he wanted me to photograph.

Kady was shooed out of her seat and we watched them disassemble her bench with our jaws hanging open. They took it apart, stuffed its cavity to the brim with the shirts, reassembled the seat and pushed her back into it.

They repeated this with Helga, then me.

At this point, the uneasiness we three had been feeling for four hours or so escalated to a level just shy of panic.

We were on a local Vietnamese bus headed to Laos that was smuggling Lacoste t-shirts. WE WERE ON A BUS FULL OF VIETNAMESE SMUGGLERS.

This rightfully raised the following questions:

"What else was this bus smuggling?"
"What were they intending to slip into our bags?"
"Why had we three been separated from the group?"
"How were we going to stay awake all night watching our bags?"
"Why were we three separated from the group?"
"How would we fare in Laotian prison?"
"Why were we three separated from the group!?"
"Had we been sold?"

Our voices grew shrill and Kady's eyes got a little teary, which was not something I'd seen on this trip. We discussed getting off the bus at the next stop but as we looked out the window, we were reminded of the sobering fact that we were in the middle of nowhere. IN VIETNAM.

My anger grew hotter as I imagined how awful it would have been if Helga had been on this bus all by herself. This protective maternal feeling for her would intensify over the next several hours, punctuating my already justified righteous (ok, that's a stretch) indignation.

Not only had we not had enough to eat or drink that day, adding to our growing hysteria and overall sense of impending doom, but Kady had to go to the bathroom. Badly. She spoke to the tall lanky one. "Toilet?" she asked. He nodded enthusiastically. She interpreted this to mean that we would be stopping shortly but some thirty minutes went by. She approached him again, this time her voice a little more shrill, "Toilet? I need a toilet!". He nodded and motioned to the front of the bus. "What does that mean? Why are you pointing up there?" She mimed his motion to the front of the bus with an angrily distorted look on her face. He nodded vigorously, tapped her on the side of the arm and motioned once again to the front of the bus. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me!" she screeched. He responded in Vietnamese, tapped her arm harder and motioned again to the front of the bus. "I don't know what THIS," she once again tapped his arm and mimicked his gestures, "means. I don't speak Vietnamese!" For the third round of this interaction, his arm tap turned into a smack and she turned it right back on him, smacking his arm as hard as she could.
Finally, it was communicated that Kady needed to go make her request known to the driver.
"Toilet?" Kady asked. The driver turned to her and laughed as he rubbed his thumb against the pads of his pointer and middle fingers in an all too familiar gesture ($). I retaliated by threatening to urinate on their bus. Of course, this threat was emboldened by their lack of English- comprehension but, again, not at all unjustified.

Within twenty minutes, a toilet break was finally made. For the first time, there were no disgusting toilet facilities we had to navigate. There were no awkward smelly holes in the floor we had to squat over with quivering legs. In fact there was no floor. Actually, no toilet facilities at all. The toilet stop was in a ditch on the side of the road. Nearly the entire bus shuffled off. The only privacy was provided by the various nooks and crannies the giant bulldozer on the side of the ditch had to offer.
What's that you ask? If the bathroom break consisted of merely pulling over to the side of the road, why couldn't it have been made an hour ago? Well, obviously, because... Oh, that's right... There is no. logical. reason.

The next time the bus stopped would be at a restaurant with no English menu or English-speaking staff where we were practically refused service. We watched pitifully with groaning stomachs as the other tables were served giant steamed prawns, grilled fish and heaping plates of vegetables and rice. We finally went around to the other passengers' tables until someone was willing to order us some food.
Ten minutes later, a plate of white rice, a bowl of murky broth, and a plate of wilted greens arrived at our table.

For this practically inedible fare, they would attempt to extort us for nearly seventeen dollars. I narrowed my eyes at this price and tilted my head, "Oh really? 300(thousand)dong? YEAH. RIGHT." They looked at one another and laughed because they knew it was an obscene and absurd price and not only would they never shame a local by serving him such a disgusting meal but had a masochistic local requested it, it would have cost some twenty cents or so if there had even been a charge. They lowered the price to what was still an unreasonable amount. I gestured towards all the other locals, "Oh really, so they paid _____? And those guys over there paid _______? They all paid more than two days wages?" I threw down a fraction of what they asked for and stormed off dramatically. They called after me and gave us a look as if to say, "Aw, come on, man." I threw down the equivalent of another two dollars, still furious.
I may or may not have yelled, "Thanks for nothing,____!" and called them something that may or may not have rhymed with "Bass Poles".

After some deliberately slow deliberation, we three boarded the bus once again, but not after taking our sweet time as the bus sat full and waiting for us.

We wrapped our bodies around our bags and tried to settle into comfortable positions to sleep. I was just drifting off as I felt something tickle my arm. I didn't want to open my eyes. I kept them pressed closed and willed myself to believe that it was just a loose hair... a piece of thread... anything but what I knew it was. I didn't want to see it... but there it was- a huge cockroach walking across my arm. I flicked it off and whimpered knowing I would feel cockroaches crawling on me for the next fifteen hours.
Hours ticked by and I rested my eyes- occasionally being lulled into a very light slumber only to be awoken by the unnecessary elaborate honking or over-sharp turns of the driver as he negotiated the mountain roads in a halting, jerking, clutch-grinding mere thirty or so miles an hour.

I think it was the closest I got to falling into a true sleep during the night hours when all of the sudden a huge gunshot bang went off. My feet shot up in the air as what had slapped against them felt like jumping flat-footed onto concrete from some ten feet above. "OUCH!" I yelped, disorientated. I looked out the window to see that directly beneath me, a large portion of the side of the bus had split open. I laughed maniacally.
The crew jumped into action and climbed off the bus followed closely by an amused, if not giddy Kady. She laughed out loud as the eric-elvendahl one grabbed a tiny baby allen wrench and ran to survey the damage with a pricelessly exasperated look on his baby-face. The driver saw Kady observing their futile efforts and stomped his foot at her several times yelling and gesturing for her to get back on the bus. While the crew worked on their makeshift repair for the next twenty to thirty minutes, the three of us once against discussed whether this should be where we bid farewell to this nightmare. But somehow we weren't afraid any more. I looked out the window and saw these four completely bewildered and overwhelmed little boys that appeared so menacing and tough just a few hours earlier as, well, people with machetes tend to appear. I was still furious; I still hated their guts and wanted to kick them in the face. But I was no longer frightened. They were just a handful of Vietnamese workers trying to make a buck and, like mean boys on the playground, having a little too much fun toying with the three frightened foreign girls.

Their pitiful repair

We decided to stay and I think I actually slept right up until the border. We climbed off the bus at the Vietnam/Laos border crossing and bumped into the other group of Europeans from the day before. Since we had been imagining them laughing and having fun and drinking mimosas and having sing-alongs on their plush coach bus, we were perhaps a little more delighted than we should have been to learn that their bus experience was as uncomfortable and abusive as ours, though lacking the intriguing element of terror as there were fifteen of them. We also found comfort in the daylight seeing their bus was just as shabby as ours.
We did our best to follow the confusing border exit regulations, paying our exit tax and getting our stamps. But the line was long and the bus decided to get one final jab in when it left us in Vietnam and drove the half mile across the border into Laos. We walked after it, berating them and finding our revenge as the entire bus had to sit waiting for us to get our visas.
walking into Laos

They had robbed us of not only 18 dollars (at least 15 dollars more than anyone else on that bus had paid), but every last shred of dignity. Even more so, they had led us through every extreme on the spectrum of human emotion. All we had left was our sarcasm -which was incomprehensible to them, our urination threats, and the act of making them wait for us. We performed all of these to the greatest and most proficient of our abilities.

The view as we drove the three or six hours (time had become irrelevant) from the border into the capital of Laos was breathtakingly beautiful. We were weaving up and down and in and out through green, baby-goat-covered mountains draped in ribbons of thick white fog. I would find something so astonishing I needed to share it with Kady but found myself so exhausted that by the time I turned my face to wake her I had already fallen back asleep. Later, she relayed the exact same experience.

By the third broad-daylight side of the road bathroom-break,

I didn't even mind.

And I was so numb and exhausted I was able to tune out the gory horror flicks they played on the TV during the daylight hours.

We arrived in Vientiane, Laos with post-traumatic stress symptoms of anger and mistrust that would last for at least four days which was exactly how long I realized it took me to smile at a local. I felt guilty about this, but we were in rough shape. I'd never felt so haggard in my life. We adopted Helga for the short period of time she spent in Vientiane. We found a room to split three ways for about $12.

I laid down on my filthy twin bed and waited for my turn to shower.

However, before my turn came and even as tiny ants crawled over me, I fell asleep and slept for sixteen hours in the same clothes I had spent the previous 24 hours wearing on a bus.

The next afternoon as Kady and I perused our guidebook to decide upon our next destination, we stumbled upon this juicy tidbit...

"Many travellers have fallen victim to the Vientiane-Hanoi bus scam, in which agents -- often guesthouses -- sell tickets for 'air-con tourist coaches' that turn out to be rattletrap public buses or minivans packed to the limit with Vietnamese bringing cheap goods home from Laos. These trips can be mini-nightmares, including a long wait at the border, and some Vietnamese drivers treat Westerners extremely badly."

Touche, Guidebook, I thought to be worthless. Touche.